Bizarre Sight of the Day

[forsyth]

Since I've moved to the South, there's occasional guys selling confederate battle flags out of RVs by the side of the road. Georgia only took the Confederate Battle Flag off their state flag a few years ago, after all.

The other week, I noticed one of them had a bunch of Confederate flags, and a flag of the Obama HOPE image. Which made me laugh, since I doubt there's much overlap between the audience for Confederate flags and Obama voters. Maybe they're trying to get into a wider audience. They do have the Confederate flag/pot leaf flags, after all.

Then yesterday, I saw one that took it a step farther. A flag, first half Obama, second half Confederate flag. I almost went back and bought one, just for the sheer bizarreness of it. But I didn't, 'cause I'm broke. I'm trying to figure out the audience for that, besides post-post-post-post ironic hipsters.

Comments

[kabbalist-mzdm.livejournal.com]

Wait...what? That's just so wacky you can't be making it up. I'm kind of surprised that there isn't some kind of reality-warping field forming around those flags. There might, however, be an audience for the flags besides those that buy them for laughs: Georgia Democrats. Whether they're white, black, or other they are citizens of the state and may feel a certain amount of pride about that. I find it hard to forget that the classic Georgia flag was the Confederate flag (heck, I didn't know they'd changed it!), but maybe when you live with it for most of your life it's easier to forget that bit of information.

It's not quite the source of cognitive dissonance that the Geobama (Jo-bama) flag is, but a few years back I saw a US Army recruiting station that was also a karaoke station while I was walking across campus. What makes more sense than signing up to put your (macho) life on the line for your country and following it up with an off-key musical performance while your recruiting officer looks on?